approved commentators; and it is impossible
for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
liberal. Still--if I have read religious history aright--faith,
hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a
sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible--thank Heaven!--to
have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon
which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry
it to her neighbour's child to "stop the fits," may be a piteously
inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.

Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our
sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
him to "hold on tight"; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be less
bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah does.

Chapter IV

Home and Its Sorrows

A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to
overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows.
Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is
passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket;
evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber
by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.

The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but
she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been
watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last
few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth
Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has
come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman,
clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure
linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a
buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of
blue-checkered